Motherhood Is Not For The Weak
by tobinfic
Summary: Penelope Garcia has made a completely well thought out and logical decision to have a child. Why the hell Derek Morgan is freaking out about it, she has no idea. It's not like he has to wear those maternity dress monstrosities, is it?
1. Chapter 1

_Author's Note: I've only seen up to the start of season five of this show, and I'm making up things as I'm going along. This fic may reference events in the first four seasons, but I'm blithely rewriting canon as I see fit. If this is going to bother you, then I suggest you don't read. Then again, what are you doing reading fanfic to begin with?_

_Rated M because there will be frank and graphic discussion of sex and childbirth, as well as references to the type of cases shown on the show. _

_I should think that it is blindingly obvious that I hold no copyright on these characters and I'm not making any money from this. _

_**The more decisions that you are forced to make alone, the more you are aware of your freedom to choose.**_

_**Thornton Wilder**_

It was not a snap decision. You didn't make snap decisions about stuff like this. In fact, most people ended up in the position Penelope Garcia had decided she wanted to be in precisely because they _hadn't_ made snap decisions, usually about limiting their alcohol intake or remembering to set an alert to remind them about their birth control and you'd really think that someone would have designed an app for that and hey, that's an idea to ponder in the bath later on but….

Okay. That was a little long, even for her.

But essentially, when you broke the situation down to its bare bones, or as she preferred to think, its essential OS code, the reality was this. She, Penelope Garcia, best dressed hacker ever to be conscripted into public service for the FBI, had no family. Yes, she had her FBI babies, but real actual DNA-based family? Not so much. And while that situation wasn't a new one, it was a lonely one.

She blamed JJ for starting it, bringing the cutest child _ever_ into the world. Being Henry's godmother was an honour she hadn't been expecting, and the sheer depth of trust that Will and JJ showed in her had blindsided her. Seriously, after ten minutes of cuddling newborn Henry, she'd had to duck into the ladies' room to strategically reapply her mascara. Thank God she hadn't been wearing her brand new false eyelashes with the purple crystals because they would have been lost in all the joyous crying.

Out of all the people that they knew, they had picked _her_ to look out for Henry's welfare.

Spiritually, well, that was probably best left to Reid as she knew for a fact that he had memorised the holy books of all the world's major religions as well as the Jedi Path handbook. But for everyday things, like how to hack an encrypted database or create an unique style that totally announced your presence to the room without overshadowing it with your inner awesomeness? That was all her.

(There was no way in hell that her godbaby would grow up to wear Reid's preferred cardigan-and-button-down ensembles. Not no way, not no how.)

And, God forbid, if anything happened to JJ and Will, not exactly the least likely thing what with both parents being in law enforcement, they had decided that they would trust her to bring up Henry. Well, her and Reid, but realistically it would be all her because have you seen how skinny that boy is? Knowing him he'd get caught up in some bizarre mathematical equation for three days and forget to feed Henry.

That faith in her had touched her. And got her thinking crazy, middle of the night thoughts, which had become first thing in the morning thoughts and lunchtime thoughts too.

She wanted a child.

She wanted a family of her own, one that didn't disperse at the end of the day to their own apartments and their own lives. She had a big heart, and it was just bursting with love for somebody. So why not have a child? She wasn't getting any younger, and it didn't seem that Mr Right was bounding athletically into view.

But since the invention of the vibrator and the sperm bank, there wasn't that much left for Mr Right to really do, conceptually-speaking.

This wasn't a snap decision. She wasn't stupid. She thought for a long time about it, drew up many, many pros and cons lists and taped them up around her apartment, adding to them whenever a new idea zinged its way through her neocortex. She volunteered for a lot of additional babysitting with Henry, which both bemused and pleased JJ and Will, who finally got to see movies in an actual movie theatre at the time of release, which had been something of a novelty in the last few years. She joined a few internet forums for women in her position contemplating parenthood alone by choice, and actually met up with a few people for coffee to discuss their situations.

"Best thing I ever did," one mother told her proudly, sponging stewed apricot off her blouse as her child gleefully threw it at her with a hand-eye coordination that was pretty skilled for a child of fourteen months.

"You will see caffeine the way you do oxygen," another warned her, bags under her eyes that rivalled Hotch's.

"You'll trade your lingerie for nursing bras and your sex life for four hours of sleep," another told her frankly. "Motherhood is not for the weak."

Penelope had nodded. Caffeine was oxygen, as far as she was concerned. And she had no sex life to speak of, so that wasn't exactly something she'd have to mourn. And she may not know how to fire a gun like JJ or kick down a door like Emily, but she wasn't weak She had survived the shooting. She had survived the deaths of her mother and her beloved stepfather back when she was eighteen, barely more than a baby. She survived staring at the lives of victims of some of the most evil, twisted people in the world, day in, day out.

She could handle motherhood.

But she'd have to remember to wear a coverall when feeding the baby. Best thing in her life he or she would no doubt be, but some of those dresses were vintage, and didn't come cheap.


	2. Chapter 2

We are at a major epoch in human history, which is that we don't need sex to recreate the race. You can have babies without sex. This is the first time in human history that has been true, and it means, for example, we could do some extraordinary things.  
**David Cronenberg**

So, decision made, Penelope did whatever she did when she didn't know the answer to something. She Googled it.

Well, no, not Googled. What was she, some poor deluded Windows user? She had like, six better search engines at her disposal, and that was without the mighty FBI mainframe to back her up.

But that was pretty much what she did.

The first thing she had to do was book an appointment with an OBGYN. Her own doctor was an absolute sweetheart, but he was pretty advanced in years and wasn't exactly set up to deal with artificial insemination.

She'd thought about using more traditional methods of getting a bun in her oven, but they all required an active male presence, and if she had that active make presence in her life, then she wouldn't be attempting single motherhood, so, yeah. Insemination.

Totally didn't make her think of cattle breeding. No sirree. She was a thoroughbred racehorse, or nothing, baby.

Plus, if there was a man involved, then she'd have to be completely up front about what she was planning, and most men would be running screaming before she could whip out her stunning cleavage to distract them. And after all those years working for the BAU, the thought of the guys that would stay pretty much creeped her right out.

So yeah, turkey basters at twelve o'clock, captain.

She had some recommendations from the women from the single mother's forum, and she'd done some discreet digging into their backgrounds. Totally not a misuse of federal resources if you do it on your lunch hour, right? Three of them she'd discarded right off the bat – too many medical malpractice claims. One had an internet search history that set her spidey-senses tingling, so she forwarded the evidence anonymously to the taskforce dedicated to uncovering child pornography. Then she hacked that doctor's patient database and sent a business-like email informing them that the doctor was the subject of an FBI investigation into child molestation.

(Yeah, not ethical. But come on. He shared his practice with a paediatrician. Completely clean, by the way, which she made clear in the email.)

That left her with a couple of choices that passed the Garcia test, and she eventually settled on Frank Hillman, MD. Her stepdad had been called Frank, and that was definitely a good omen.

Sneaking out for her first consultation hadn't been easy. She worked with the best psychological profilers in the business. Some of them had literally written the book on how to do their jobs. And the rest were just nosy.

And it wasn't like she didn't want to tell them – they were her friends, her babies, her rocks – but there was a small little part of her brain that worried, ever so slightly, about what they'd think about this plan. What they'd think about her.

Which was just stupid, she knew. JJ was a mom, a mom who hadn't exactly planned her own child's entrance into the world. Emily didn't have any kids, but always took the kid cases particularly strongly. Hotch had a son that he saw at best on a fortnightly basis. Reid was terrified of children, even if he claimed not to be. Rossi had never stayed married long enough for kids to be an issue.

And Derek…

Well, he was the main problem. He was her Angelfish, her Chocolate God, her daily dose of all that was just and true in the universe. And if he thought that she was doing the wrong thing, that she would be a bad mom, then her world would pretty much collapse.

She loved him. As her friend, and as more. It was completely a one sided thing, she knew; he saw the flirting and the x-rated banter as just playfulness, as a part of the friendship. If he had any idea that she actually meant the things she said whole-heartedly…well. Best not to think about it.

She'd realised long ago that his friendship was all he would offer her, and that was no bad deal. She had a friendship for life. She could see them sitting in the same senior village down in Florida shocking the nurses. If he would just do the right thing and find some pretty, slim lawyer or catwalk model to marry, then she could finally put her love for him away in a little box in her heart. Because for all his image as the king of the players, she just knew that when he decided he was going to commit, he'd commit. For life.

And she could give up the last little scrap of hope she carried that one day he'd realise that he should be with her, and not Miss Size 4 Runway Walking District Attorney. Because that little scrap of hope was a bitch – it kept her from moving on, and away from her dreams of him and what their lives could be together.

She'd already decided to ask Derek to be a godfather. She couldn't think of anybody she wanted more to be involved in her as yet un-conceived child's life.

The first thing that the doctor had said to her, once she'd sneaked off to her appointment, was "Congratulations!", which had eased her panic a little. Sitting in the waiting room, she had been the only single person there. Couples of both genders surrounded her, reading pregnancy magazines and bickering about unloading the dishwasher. Having the doctor look pleased at the thought that she wanted a child despite the fact that she was planning to raise him or her alone calmed her down, which was good, because she was beginning to freak out.

Dr Hillman was in his early fifties, had a clean credit and criminal record, had no medical malpractice claims and had graduated top of his class from an Ivy League school. He'd twenty years experience in aiding artificial conception, regularly published papers in scientific journals and most importantly, had twinkly eyes.

He talked her through the next four months of her life. The information wasn't new – her apartment was littered with piles of hardcopies of websites that gave her the same information. It just reassured her to hear somebody obviously well qualified to say the same things.

"You're not going to get pregnant for the next four months," he said kindly. "At least. You need to prepare your body. What you're embarking on is a massive undertaking, Miss Garcia, and you need to make sure you're in the best shape you can be."

Penelope looked down at her ample curves and sighed.

"Are you telling me that I need to lose weight?" she asked.

"Certainly not," the doctor replied diplomatically. "Although you're a few pounds over optimum, your weight isn't heavy enough to have a negative affect on conception. And crash dieting will rob your body of nutrients essential for preparing your body to grow a child."

"Okay," Penelope said, relieved.

"Let's talk vitamins," Doctor Hillman said, pulling pamphlets from his desk. "You're going to have to decide whether you want to take supplements or try and revise your diet to include these vitamins naturally."

"I know I'm going to have to cut out caffeine," Penelope sighed, thinking longingly of the coffee shop two blocks down from her apartment that had finally learned how to get her order right.

"That's what people find the hardest," the doctor agreed. "Everyone knows the dangers of alcohol during pregnancy, but getting people to switch to decaf is pretty tough. And sadly, nobody's invented caffeine-free chocolate yet."

Penelope almost whimpered at the thought of a chocolate-free year, but held herself together.

"It's not something you have to give up completely," Doctor Hillman said, reaching over his desk to take her hand. "Just limit yourself to one bar a week. Buy the good stuff. Make it count."

Penelope left the doctor's office with a renewed sense of purpose. From now on, until the baby was born, no more coffee unless it was decaf, and then only one cup a day. A small one. One bar of chocolate a week, no matter how freaky the cases got. Only organically-grown food wherever possible, free from pesticides and other unnatural chemicals. Lots more colourful fruit and vegetables in her diet, because they were the ones that naturally carried the vitamins she needed to take – vitamin A because she wanted the baby to have healthy eyes, vitamins C and E for antioxidants, because some research showed that they had an affect on preventing chromosomal defects, folic acid and the B vitamins to protect against spina bifida, zinc and selenium to try and ward off potential miscarriage.

That happened with a lot of first pregnancies, the doctor had warned her gently. It often meant that she'd have no trouble conceiving again, that many women went on to have successful pregnancies. But it did happen, and she should be aware of it.

She had supplements for the less easy to replicate vitamins, but she was going to try and overhaul her diet. If it worked and she got pregnant, she'd have to continue to eat healthily anyway, so cutting down on takeout was probably a good idea.

She was going to have to radically alter the way that she ate and drank (no more Margarita Mondays in the near future) and hope that the country's best profilers didn't notice.

She was so screwed.


End file.
